More Mass. politics

Wednesday

May 7, 2014 at 6:11 PMMay 7, 2014 at 9:41 PM

A political note and a personal one:

The Massachusetts Republican Party isn’t very good at getting Republicans elected or proposing innovative policies, but you can’t beat it for entertainment value. Take the state GOP convention in March, which didn’t exactly draw a lot of attention. I found it noteworthy for the fact that Richard Tisei, its previous nominee for lieutenant governor and the Republican with the best chance of breaking into the U.S. House delegation, boycotted it because the platform was too extreme.

There was also a bit of gamesmanship involved in the governor’s race, where party officials, anxious to avoid having Charlie Baker suffer the indignity of having a contested primary, allegedly changed the rules mid-convention to keep tea party challenger Mark Fisher from crossing the 15 percent threshold and qualifying for the primary. That’s not all that funny, but this is: Fisher has sued the state party, and demanded $1 million to withdraw from the race, the Globe reports. To which the party’s lawyer responded that it’s, umm, against the law to buy people off the ballot.

Like it or not, you can expect more political news from me between now and the November election. I’ve just been named Massachusetts Politics Editor for GateHouse Media and its various affiliates. I’ll be heading up a team of reporters and editors, charged with organizing the campaign coverage of our 100+ newspapers and websites and producing what I hope will be high-impact stories on statewide races. I’ll also be writing a weekly campaign-oriented column for all our opinion pages.

I’ll still be MWDN opinion editor, though leaning a bit more heavily on the capable Phil Maddocks, and I expect I’ll still be venting here at Holmes & Co., though maybe less often and more focused on Bay State politics.

But I’m enjoying the prospect of figuring out how we can do a better job covering a campaign. Politics in Massachusetts can be a dreary affair, appealing to insiders but mystifying or just boring to everyone else. The Boston papers go for the story of the day, and everyone else follows. TV interviews and debates tend toward “gotcha” questions that generate a little heat and less light. I don’t have any answers yet on how to do it better, but I’d be interested in your thoughts on the subject.

Rick Holmes

A political note and a personal one:

The Massachusetts Republican Party isn’t very good at getting Republicans elected or proposing innovative policies, but you can’t beat it for entertainment value. Take the state GOP convention in March, which didn’t exactly draw a lot of attention. I found it noteworthy for the fact that Richard Tisei, its previous nominee for lieutenant governor and the Republican with the best chance of breaking into the U.S. House delegation, boycotted it because the platform was too extreme.

There was also a bit of gamesmanship involved in the governor’s race, where party officials, anxious to avoid having Charlie Baker suffer the indignity of having a contested primary, allegedly changed the rules mid-convention to keep tea party challenger Mark Fisher from crossing the 15 percent threshold and qualifying for the primary. That’s not all that funny, but this is: Fisher has sued the state party, and demanded $1 million to withdraw from the race, the Globe reports. To which the party’s lawyer responded that it’s, umm, against the law to buy people off the ballot.

Like it or not, you can expect more political news from me between now and the November election. I’ve just been named Massachusetts Politics Editor for GateHouse Media and its various affiliates. I’ll be heading up a team of reporters and editors, charged with organizing the campaign coverage of our 100+ newspapers and websites and producing what I hope will be high-impact stories on statewide races. I’ll also be writing a weekly campaign-oriented column for all our opinion pages.

I’ll still be MWDN opinion editor, though leaning a bit more heavily on the capable Phil Maddocks, and I expect I’ll still be venting here at Holmes & Co., though maybe less often and more focused on Bay State politics.

But I’m enjoying the prospect of figuring out how we can do a better job covering a campaign. Politics in Massachusetts can be a dreary affair, appealing to insiders but mystifying or just boring to everyone else. The Boston papers go for the story of the day, and everyone else follows. TV interviews and debates tend toward “gotcha” questions that generate a little heat and less light. I don’t have any answers yet on how to do it better, but I’d be interested in your thoughts on the subject.